Might As Well Jump: Skydiving and Slowing Down

At the end of 2012, I went skydiving with my wife and a friend.
It was wicked awesome.
Have you ever done it?

There’s nothing like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane!

I was absolutely amazed at the sound, fury and feel of falling.
It was rather mind blowing, as you can see from the smile on my face.
In all honesty, I look forward to doing it again.
This is something I could learn to love.
It would be good to be great at skydiving, or as Woody once put it,
“Falling…with style.”

This week I’ve been thinking alot about Slowing Down as a soul exercise for Lent.

Slowing Down is more or less jumping out a plane. There are things that we have to leave behind. Things that dominate our traffic pattern. Slowing down is an exercise of letting go, releasing…or falling. I talk to a lot of people who say that they would never jump out of an airplane, in fact, I used to be one of them. It’s frightening, it’s isolating and there’s no telling where you’ll land. Slowing down is a bit the same. Letting go of things that consume brain power and heart energy is a tough thing to do, even when they are negative and dragging you down or backwards. But like Diamond Dave used to say, “Might as well jump!”

You Don’t Have To Fall Alone

I made a tandem jump, which means that I was strapped not only to a parachute, but to an instructor who had successfully landed over 4,000 jumps. Sure, I was still approaching the earth at 9.6 feet per second, travelling in excess of 120mph, but I wasn’t alone. There was someone who had done it before with me — and he lived every time.

You Are Not The First

Other people have cut pieces of busyness out of their lives, you can too. Others have successfully managed to say “No” to things so that they could say “Yes” to peace and rest. In the same way that my instructor had been a skydiver long before I even thought about doing it, you can climb into a community harnass that will support you as you make great choices for your self and your emotional/spiritual health.

Sometimes, You Need A New Way To Get To The Same Place

One of the main ways we get stuck in our lives is by doing the same things the same ways and expecting different results. If you are feeling that slowing down wouldn’t be good for you…how do you know? Sometimes, to get where you want to go, you need to try a different route. Skydiving is a great way to approach the ground beneath our feet differently.